The present disclosure relates to an electrophotographic image forming apparatus and an image forming method executed in the image forming apparatus.
An electrophotographic image forming apparatus includes a fixing device for heating a sheet on which a toner image has been transferred to fix the toner image to the sheet. It is known that in this type of image forming apparatus, fine particles such as Ultra Fine Particles (UFPs) and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are generated when the toner image is heated by the fixing device. When the fine particles move from the fixing device along a conveyance path of the sheet and flow out of the image forming apparatus, air around the image forming apparatus is contaminated, potentially causing harm to people's health. As a technology to deal with the problem, there is known a configuration that can prevent the fine particles from flowing out of the image forming apparatus by generating an airflow flowing in an opposite direction of a conveyance direction, on an upstream side of the fixing device in the conveyance direction in the conveyance path of the sheet.